Kickin' & Screamin'

Even at almost 50, I often think about pregnancy.  No, I no longer have the desire to be pregnant….but I think about it like someone thinks about something they’ve never experienced–wondering what it would have been like.  I have a dear friend who recently gave birth to her first child.  Her pregnancy fascinated me.  The first time I saw her baby boy kick inside of her belly, I had cold chills.  I will never know what it feels like to have a little life growing inside of me.  And honestly, I couldn’t be more thankful.  For, if I had gotten pregnant back when I desperately wanted to, I wouldn’t have turned to adoption.  Thinking about my life without Ella literally makes me struggle to breathe.  GOD KNEW.  God knew that the child he had chosen for me wouldn’t grow in my belly, but in a woman’s belly in San Marcos, Guatemala.

When Keith and I married, we didn’t want children (or so we thought).  We were both teachers, surrounded by hundreds of children every day.  We were truly content with each other, and the daily routine of coming home to our dogs each and every day.   Then, in the summer of 2003–two years after getting married–our thoughts on children changed.  Both of us had a drastic change of heart on the exact same evening.  We went to visit family in Indiana, and met a sweet boy named Brady for the first time.  I’m not good at this family tree thing–so you figure it out:  He is my aunt’s (by marriage) sister’s grandchild.  He was a bit over a year old at the time.  We were all sitting outside of my aunt and uncle’s home, making homemade pizza on the grill (that’s how my brain works…I specifically remember the food)….and Brady was toddling around offering everyone a rock from the tiny pile he had made on the patio.  His laughter cut through me in a way I’d never experienced.  His smile pierced my heart, and his hugs made me want to cry in a way I didn’t know existed.  As soon as we retired to our room that night, Keith and I looked at each other.  We stared at each other for a few seconds, then at the exact same moment, each of us blurted out, “I want a child!”  I remember crying that night….so thankful that God had shown me that I did, indeed, need a tiny human being in my life….even though I had been convinced otherwise for so long.

We immediately thought that our newly made decision would be so easy ….in that all we needed to do now was get pregnant.  We were both 34, and we knew we were a little older than most new parents….but we never in a million years thought that we would face infertility.  That word–“infertility”–seemed like something you just hear about happening to other people.  It’s a word that sounds so hopeless and sterile….and brings on an hollow place in your heart that aches every single day.  I spent so much time at my doctor’s office, every employee there knew me by name.  I would sit in the waiting room and watch teenage girls walk in, hugely pregnant, often alone, and often accompanied by a bum-looking boy with his pants hanging down past his underwear. That boy didn’t even want to be a Daddy, and it angered me that life was so unfair.  I would see couples walk in hand in hand, smiles beaming so bright it was blinding.  I would catch myself staring at them…wondering how long it took them to get to this glorious pregnant state.

I would get so angry that I would leave the waiting room to go lock myself in the nearest restroom so I could cry and hyperventilate in private.  More than once, the nurse would come knock on the bathroom door, telling me it was my time to see the doctor.  She knew if I wasn’t in the waiting room, I’d be locked in the bathroom crying.

The strange thing was, after Keith and I both underwent many different (and rather humiliating) procedures, we were told that there was no medical reason for our inability to get pregnant.  Nothing was “wrong” with either of us….we just simply couldn’t conceive a child.  At that time, I was angered even more by that.  It would have been easier if we could have had a “reason”….a medical reason for why we couldn’t conceive.  But what we learned later was that we DID have a reason….not a medical reason, but a GOD reason.  God wanted us to adopt.

We finally heard God, as we both became not only content–but also excited about the option of adoption.  We were immediately drawn to international adoption.  And because I knew a couple of families who had adopted from Russia, I told Keith that I felt like we should check in to adopting from that country.  We began filing paperwork, researching, and even meeting with my friends who had beautiful children adopted from Russia.  Everything was moving along, but nothing felt right.  It felt weird, cold and routine….but not like I thought it should feel.  I began to pray, asking God to show me what was missing.  Something HAD to be missing.  Beginning the process of adopting a child shouldn’t feel so empty, right?

Our adoption agency sent me tons of reading literature, brochures and general information on a weekly basis.  Some of it was pinpointed towards Russia, and some covered a broad scope that included information on other countries.  One afternoon, I sat on our front porch swing and looked through some info that had arrived in the mail, and I froze on a particular brochure.  I held it in my hand and felt like I couldn’t move.  I had cold chills, tears in my eyes, and a firm grip on the paper in my hand, which was filled with pictures of children with big brown eyes and beautiful olive skin.  After at least an hour of crying on my porch swing, KNOWING God had spoken to me, I called Keith and said, “we’re looking in the wrong place!  Our child isn’t in Russia.  Our child will be born in Guatemala.”

The next morning, I drove to the adoption agency and began the mountain of paperwork necessary to change everything over to Guatemala.  Suddenly, it all felt wonderful.  The warm fuzzies that were missing before were now there.  My heart was full of hope and excitement.  Unfortunately, my heart wasn’t prepared for the fact that another year would pass before we were finally told that our child had been born.  The paperwork grew and grew, the red tape was thick, and I felt like the process was draining me of my hope.  We would wait for weeks and weeks for one little document to get approved, only to find out that it was denied because the person who notarized it forgot to put their middle initial in their signature, therefore not matching their notary stamp.  I would cry myself to sleep as I knew that we had a good six weeks added on to our wait just because of one little mistake. I had never felt so mentally and emotionally exhausted in my life.

I finally grew so weak that I told Keith that perhaps we should call the adoption agency and change our preference.  We had previously requested a girl.  We wanted a baby girl so badly, but I was starting to feel like perhaps the preference of a girl was holding us up.  What if a baby boy became available?  Shouldn’t we be open to that?  So, the following morning, I picked up the phone to call Carol, our adoption consultant.  When she answered, she said something about how ironic it was that I was calling her, because she had just sat down to dial our number….she had wonderful news!  A baby girl had been born in San Marcos, Guatemala, and the mother desires for the child to be adopted.  This baby girl, named Alba by her biological mother, was ours.  OURS.  SHE WAS OURS.

We had to wait until she was eight weeks old, and until more mountains of paperwork were filed, then we could visit her.  We still had months of waiting until we could bring her home….but she was ours.  Our baby girl.  Our Ella.

The day she turned eight weeks old, our plane landed in Guatemala City.  We checked in to a hotel right next door to the US Embassy and anxiously waiting for our Ella to arrive. A few hours later, a taxi pulled up in front of the hotel, with an older lady holding a beautiful baby girl.  No car seat, just the two them in the back of that taxi.  The lady was Dorita, Dora for short, who was Ella’s foster mother.  Ella lived with Dora and eleven other family members in a tiny house in Guatemala City.  Dora spoke no English, but had a look of love on her face that assured me that she was taking very good care of our baby girl.  Behind the taxi was a nice car, driven by our Guatemalan-appointed attorney, Lily.  She translated for Dora and explained to us that we would have Ella in our care for four days and nights.  On the fifth day, my heart broke into a hundred pieces. That was the day that a taxi arrived once again, with Dora in the back, this time to take Ella back to her home.  We still had months of paperwork to wait on….we had to give OUR baby back to Dora, and leave.  I cried a cry like I had never experienced.  My chest hurt.  My body ached.  I had never hurt like that before.  I didn’t think I would survive. That plane trip home, back to Atlanta, was unlike anything we ever thought we’d have to endure.

For months, I had been writing a journal to our baby girl, sharing my thoughts and fears.  One night, I wrote to her, “I want to hold you and love on you so much that it physically hurts me.  I don’t know how I can keep holding on.  All I know to do is keep praying.  Keep praying until something happens.”  I kept staring at my words until I saw the letters PUSH jumping off the page.  Pray Until Something Happens.  PUSH.  I made copies of a picture of Ella–one that we took the very first day we met her–and wrote PUSH on each one.  I hung them all over the house. I hung them in my car.  I gave them to friends, asking for their prayers.

EVERYTHING was complete on our end.  We were waiting on the Guatemalan government to finish their part.  They seemed to be in no hurry.  They didn’t understand our pain.  They didn’t know how bad my heart hurt.

Five more months passed, and we were still waiting.  We received pictures and letters from Dora.  The letters were translated by one of her sons who spoke broken English.  The pictures she sent were the most precious items I’d ever held.  The end still wasn’t in sight, and I had to see Ella again.  This time, Keith chose to stay home and I took my Mom.  We flew in late one afternoon, and arranged for Ella to be brought to us the following morning at the same hotel as before.  The next morning at 8:00 sharp, the taxi arrived with my seven month old child sitting in Dora’s lap.  For some reason, Mom had brought a little purse down with her from the hotel room.  When the door to the taxi opened, Mom began to cry and she threw that little purse over in some thick, thorny bushes.  While Dora passed my Ella over to my Mom, who was meeting her granddaughter for the first time, I was crawling through a thorny bush trying to find Mom’s purse.  I had blood dripping from my arms and legs when I finally emerged with it in hand….crying from excitement and loving the fact that God allows us to experience humor in even the most painful events in life.  When Dora placed Ella into Mom’s arms, Ella placed her had on Mom’s cheek and smiled at her.  They’ve been inseparable ever since.

Mom and I are extremely close….the very best of friends.  I knew that leaving Ella, once again, in Guatemala would break me.  What I hadn’t prepared for was seeing my Mom have to leave her behind.  Experiencing that pain together is something that most Moms and Daughters will never experience.  It brought us even closer, and we didn’t even think that was possible.  Without Mom with me that day–the day I once again had to leave my daughter behind–I don’t think I would have made it.  I think my heart would have broken in half, never to be mended again.

We kept praying, PUSH…PUSH.  Then late in the evening on March 31, 2007, we received the phone call that I had longed for and prayed for…for what seemed like an eternity.  The paperwork was complete.  It was approved.  We were FINISHED.  We spent the next day getting everything in order, plane reservations made, packing, and getting ready to go down to Guatemala one more time–this time to bring our baby girl HOME.  We arrived on April 2.  Dora arrived in the taxi a few hours later, holding our 11 month old Ella.  Dora had brought her son along to translate, and we later met with our attorney Lily, to finalize the plans for our FINAL paper signing the following morning, next door at the US Embassy.

The following morning, we walked over to the Embassy and waiting in line for an hour.  When we finally heard our names called, I immediately started crying.  I was so happy I simply couldn’t hold it in a minute longer.  We approached the judge, and the second we signed the VERY last document, our baby girl threw up all over me.  Turns out, she had a horrible stomach bug….what we  found out later was being called the “worse virus to hit Central America in 10 years.”

Being the strong, resilient child she was, she was better by the next morning, at which time it hit Keith.  He was deathly ill for about 15 hours, locked in the second bedroom of our little suite at the Casa la Grande Hotel.  Afraid to enter Guatemala City alone with our new bundle of joy, Ella and I roamed the hotel grounds and spent time on the hotel patio while Keith suffered in privacy.

The next day was the most exciting day of our lives….we were flying home with our daughter.  FINALLY, just 20 days shy of her first birthday, bringing our girl home.  We woke up so excited, packing our things and getting ready to meet our taxi to the airport.  Then it hit….I thought I had escaped it.  I was “the healthy one” and I was sure that I wouldn’t catch it.  Oh dear Lord in Heaven, was I wrong.  The taxi had to pull over twice for me to throw up on the streets of Guatemala City.  I had to stay in a bathroom of the tiny airport until our plane was called for boarding.  Once we got on the plane, I got so sick that the flight crew made an exception to the strict rules and actually allowed me to stay in the bathroom for take-off, rather than being in my seat.  The flight attendants would occasionally knock on the bathroom door and ask if I was okay, and an announcement was finally made that the restroom in the back of the plane was “out of order”–and all passengers should use the restroom in the front of the plane until further notice.

I have never been that sick since.  I hope I never am.  But, oh what JOY I had in my heart as I sat on the cramped floor of that airplane bathroom with my head at toilet level….knowing that our child was sitting in the seat a few rows away, laughing and playing.  About 20 minutes before landing, I was finally back in my seat.  As a male flight attendant walked by, Ella reached out and grabbed his hiney with her tiny little fingers and laughed a laugh so loud that my once broken heart burst with joy.  The flight attendant said “are you flirting with me??”  I knew then she would was a pistol, and I wasn’t wrong.

Ella brings me a joy that can’t easily be described.  GOD chose her for me.  On that day when we brought Ella home, I never dreamed I’d one day be a single parent.  I never dreamed that we would endure the pain and heartbreak that we have.  I never imagined that my heart would be broken yet again in a much different way than it was when I had to leave my baby girl in Guatemala.  But God knew.  HE knew all of this would happen, and that it would be hard, it would hurt in unbearable ways, but HE would get us through.  Ella and I are two peas in a pod.  Life has made us tough.  We are strong chicks and we’re proud of that.

God is good.  He knows what’s good for you, and what you can handle.  He will help you through the junk that you can’t handle.  He will provide.  He provided me with an angel from Guatemala.

If you’re struggling with anything–which we all do at some point in life, just PUSH.  Pray Until Something Happens.  It will happen.  God Bless!